I installed icewm + icewm themes from PPM, exited to the prompt and
did xwin icewm, then rebooted after making a couple of changes to icewm preferences.
Some key assignments have changed but it's working pretty well I think.

i've finally got a bootable system on a usb stick after a few more failures.

I used a 16 Gb stick and after a failure with it, I looked at the formatting in detail with gparted. I found it had a few K bits unformated at the front and use gparted to move the formated section to fill the space on the stick.

After this it worked. I use a netbook and the windows are too big for it, but had no trouble getting on to the internet. Found the metro screen a bit strange especially as it was too big for the computer but at least it's a start.

thanks a lot. Tony

Thanks for filling in another piece of the puzzle. With a netbook you may need to reduce the global font size to 78. Restart X then in the browser, use ctrl in combination with the plus and minus keys to adjust to taste. Further options include slightly reducing the JWM & GTK themes font point sizes but adjusting the global font size will probably suffice.

The Metro interface is best run at 3 or 4 rows as in Billtoo’s last shot. The intention is that you pan left and right by moving your mouse scroll wheel back and forth or use two fingered swipes on the touch pad.

Not surprisingly, I believe that it does given the combination of panel and global key combinations. ALT+E to launch email is a good example but I find launching the panel followed by the down arrow key then enter even more convenient. I must say I enjoyed your video and admire what you have done with Slacko

@ gcmartin,

Quote:

let just tell users that they need a 16GB or larger USB drive and that the process will destroy all existing information that exist on the USB in producing a BLUE/Quirky6+ system.

My current thinking is to add a “known problem” section to the second post in this thread should anyone hit a problem with an 8GB stick. It would include preparation of the target stick(s) and the possibility of using a bigger stick.

Finally I would welcome some more feedback on speed and usability_________________Regards ETP

I've attached a couple of images of vnc running on both a phone and a tablet (both are running Windows).

Its amusing how some who are concerned about security and the potential for the likes of the NSA to have a backdoor entry via the Windows operating system - often fail to appreciate that there are potential backdoors inbuilt into the CPU http://www.realvnc.com/products/viewerplus/#outofband

Out-of-band KVM

Technicians no longer need rely on a functioning operating system and network drivers to take control of a computer. VNC Viewer Plus can connect to a supported computer with Intel® Core™ vPro™ technology out-of-band, so that more complex issues, such as OS failures and boot problems, can be diagnosed remotely.

I just tried using the linux method to install BluePup v2 on an 8gig PNY flash drive with 7.6gigs shown as free on the fat32 partition.
There were no unallocated space at the beginning of the partition either.
The install failed to boot.
But I did the install using Slacko 5.5 frugal install with a 1.2gig slackosave file that had a fair amount of space left on it.
After doing the xz --decompress.......
with sync, which I made into a script so I was sure to get it right before taking the plunge, I noticed that the free space in my slacko save file had all but disappeared as well as the processor usage had maxed out according to the taskbar icon.
Being a glutton for punishment, I am going to repartition the flaswh drive and try it again.
I have a backup of my pupsave file, so I can fall back on it if I for some reason need to.
I do not know what tricks the xz command does in that it creates a f2fs partition along with the fat 32 partition.
I do not have the means of checking the contents of the f2fs partition as I do not have the tools installed to do so.
Anyway, I will check back when I get it working.

I wouldn't install Adobe Flash or Thunderbird. Chrome comes with its own Pepper Flash distribution which is far, far more secure than any Adobe build. Thunderbird/Seamonkey/Firefox are just not at all secure according to a few dozen security studies in the last 5 years.

With regard to security, I work on the basis that there is no such thing as a secure O/S, keeping nothing on my PC that I would not mind being in the public domain. There is utterly no reason to blindly believe that the systems behind the internet sites of banks, shops or any financial institutions are anything but wide open and as such are susceptible to both internal fraud and external attack. IMHO telephone banking is preferable to on-line banking as if something goes wrong the bank cannot blame your lack of security or make out that your PC must have been breached. If shopping on line the best that can be hoped for is to limit the risk by using a dedicated prepayment card with a limited amount on it rather than a credit or debit card.
Interesting quote from a discussion on actual stick capacity versus advertised capacity.

Quote:

Memory sticks and hard drives for that matter are sold like broadband. We give you up to 20MB bandwidth actually means that 99.9% of customers are lucky to get close to 8MB. The only people that get the full bandwidth are those that live in a tent no more than 4 inches from the exchange and are fed by a platinum cable immersed in a bath of liquid nitrogen that’s wrapped in the finest yak wool hand stitch by Tibetan monks. Never met one myself but they must exist.

What do I need to install in Slacko 5.5 to be able to view the contents of the f2fs partition? When I try to mount it, I get a message of the file system type as being unsupported as to a needed add-on.

Also, it just does not seem right that one would have to use Windows to install a linux OS.

And why was the jump made to using f2fs? Why not use e3fs or e4fs as most Puppy OSes already have the means to read and check those types of file systems?

Back when I installed Quirky, I did a work around in that I redid the f2fs partition to an ext4 partition and then uncompressed the image file to that partition. And that worked for me at the time.

I mean is an f2fs partition required? Or is it just jumping on a new type of file system? It is also my understanding that the f2fs file system is still in the alpha stage of development.Last edited by 8-bit on Sat 22 Mar 2014, 19:01; edited 1 time in total

After a second attempt at creating a bootable USB stick with blue, and seeing the drive icons change from sdd1 to sdd1 and sdd2 with the popup info window on sdd2 show it as an f2fs file system, I installed f2fs-tools and did a check of that partition.
The report ended up with a fail and I am attaching it as a text file.

Also, even though the boot flag was set for sdd1, it never showed up in my computers boot selection menu.
I could get that usb stick to show be instead, setting the boot flag to sdd2.
But naturally, without the kernel being loaded, the boot failed.

The report is for your consideration.

f2fs_report.zip

Description

The zip extension is fake! Read the file as a text file.Done with fsck.f2fs /dev/sdd2

Unfortunately, I'm certainly not the one who can answer your questions. However, the f2fs file system was initiated by BarryK as he advised this file system is less abrasive to USB drives. You may wish to check out Barry's blog on the matter. I tried to search it but I couldn't locate it again.

I've been using upup3.9.9,2 for my f2fs formating, you need a late kernel to see it.

Blue Pup has a tiny fat 16 partition up front for booting.

When I succeeded getting Blue Pup onto a 16Gb stick I had 8Gb unused at the back.

My solution was to move everything out of the second partition to backup. Delete second partition using Gparted, then putting in a new f2fs partition to fill stick, Then moving the backed up folders and symlinks back in.

Seems to work but couldn't download Firefox. I need "Nosquint" and it doesn't work in Seamonkey.

At this point in time f2fs is quite mature although some of the tools lag behind. The report you posted is an example, as the error is spurious. In QT Barry used f2fs developing upon the work by 01Micko & JAMESBOND.
I am convinced that f2fs is not to blame here. If it were there would have been no bootable sticks produced with the 8GB image.
One of the reasons for using the 8GB image approach and Windows rather than a revised *usfs.xz file was so that Blue Pup “might” appeal to Window’s users with no knowledge of Linux. I failed to anticipate the “stick” problems and am actively seeking a solution._________________Regards ETP

As I earlier stated, when I start my computer and am given the option to press function key 12 for a boot menu, The flash drive/stick does not show up at all in the selection under the drives option. If I fool with the f2fs partition as to setting the boot flag on it, I them get it listed in the boot menu.
But I know that will not work to boot it. So with the fat32 partition boot flag set, (I checked), I get no listing for it in the boot menu.
And this PC will boot from a flash drive as I have did it before.
So at this point, I am assuming that one has to use windows to install linux to the flash drive and to me, this just does not seem right.
It is like saying "Windows is needed for an install of this linux derivative."
And that sucks as some of us do not even have windows on our PCs and have went to a linux only system.

If there is an issue with an 8GB or larger target stick it will fail to boot regardless of the method used.

In the face of a failure it is best to attempt to return the target stick to its virgin state and then try your preferred method again.

In Linux use Gparted to do that: (Use a 16GB stick if available)

1. Start by clicking on “device” then select “Create Partition Table”

2. Create a single fat32 partition spanning the whole stick accepting all other defaults.

(Do not set any flags or change anything else)

If you decide to have another try before issuing the commands, can I ask that you launch HTOP and use it to monitor the whole creation process? It may provide a clue as to what is going wrong.

Code:

# xz --decompress --stdout blue_pup_v2_8gb.img.xz > /dev/sdx
# sync

(replace x with your drive letter)
p.s
The xz part merely decompresses the image it does not create anything. Stdout writes the decompressed data to the target stick and sync flushes the buffers to ensure that all the data in memory is written to the stick.

If the stick fails to boot can you please detail the nature of the failure?
e.g.
1. Did you see syslinux run?
2. Did vmlinuz load?
3. Did you then see an error message, flashing cursor, the word “Boot” or something else?_________________Regards ETP

There used to be a time where flash memory was reliable (NOR flash).
To achieve a lower cost (less silicon area) NAND flash was used for the larger flash devices.
But NAND was less reliable. Therefore special controllers where developped that could manage the unreliable NAND flash, and make it more reliable.
These controllers are inside the USB stick, so from the outside the USB stick appears to be reliable...until the moment that the controller can't repair the NAND memory anymore.

But NAND keeps getting less and less reliable with the shrinking geometry. So the simple controllers inside the USB stick can't keep up.....

Let's call the OS to the rescue....

Now we have F2FS, so we can have totally unreliable flash memory behave like it is reliable. Layer upon layer of error correction....

That brings me back to my original question:
Why can't we make a 7 Gbyte image ? Just "throw away" one Gbyte, at the benefit of 99% succesfull installs ? Or does the tooling for creating this image only work in multiples of 4 Gbyte ?

That brings me back to my original question:
Why can't we make a 7 Gbyte image ? Just "throw away" one Gbyte, at the benefit of 99% succesfull installs ? Or does the tooling for creating this image only work in multiples of 4 Gbyte ?

The amount of data inside the image is only about 1.6 GB but a practical minimum partition size would be about 6GB the closest thing being an 8GB stick. If you image an 8GB stick the image returns to its original size regardless of the quantity of data within it. Just putting the image on a 16GB stick has worked for some but not all people. That is the equivalent of your 7GB suggestion. The excess 8GB can later be formatted and utilised.
There are other methods of install but none as user friendly as flashing an image onto a stick provided it works. The stick size dictates the image size._________________Regards ETP

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